


Looking Glass

by VirtualxChaos



Category: Vampire Knight (Anime & Manga)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Other, Slice of Life, Vampire Knight Memories, Yuuki/Kaname(mentioned)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:08:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25196722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VirtualxChaos/pseuds/VirtualxChaos
Summary: “Some day, a long, long time from now, you will open your eyes again. I wonder, what kind of man will you be?”
Relationships: Cross Yuuki/Kiryuu Zero, Cross Yuuki/Kiryuu Zero/Kuran Kaname, Kiryuu Ren & Kiryuu Zero, Kiryuu Zero & Kuran Ai
Comments: 2
Kudos: 21





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Ahhhhhh, this fandom. It has been 11 years since the VK anime came out and stole my heart. The manga was even greater. And now! Vampire Knight Memories, a totally new manga that fulfills all the Yuuki x Zero shippers dreams. Truthfully I've always thought traditional lovenm triangles were dumb, but the way the original VK manga ended left a nice opening for a polyamorous ship. 
> 
> So the first half of this story will primarily be the more domestic side of those 1000 years that Yuuki and Zero shared(which I've taken certain creative liberties with). The second half will be an actual solid plot that will pretty solidly diverge from canon as it stands in VK Memories currently. From the tags I'm sure you can guess what that means. Anyway, enjoy! - Chaos

1.

Zero gazes up at the glass coffin that stretches before, contemplating the person safely sheltered inside it. He’s been here for some time, a couple hours maybe, alone on the single bench that occupies the otherwise empty tomb, thinking. 

More than seventy years have passed since Kaname’s eyes had closed for the final time. A lot has changed since then, he feels like; and at the same its like nothing has changed at all. This is not the first time that Zero has visited this place alone with a heavy mind, but it feels different this time. This time, he almost wishes that the man resting in an eternal slumber would wake up. It seems unfair somehow, that he would look so at peace, while the rest of the world carried on as chaotic as ever.

Yuuki was pregnant. Seventy years had came and gone since Yuuki had been reborn as a vampire. Since Kaname had become the enemy of hunters and vampires alike, unwittingly pushing them together to take down the pureblood killer. Fifty years she mourned him; mourned so deeply that thought of somehow betraying his memory pained her. To move on would be to acknowledge that he was truly gone. He remembers feeling that way for his family; for years he had thought of nothing but taking revenge and rejoining them.

Zero has admitted to himself that he knows very little about Kaname. His memories of adolescence are stained with hatred and misery, and the memories of the pureblood are tinged with distrust and malice. In her weaker moments, Yuuki would say things that revealed a certain depth that he had not known before, and yet in hindsight were inarguable. 

_He cared so much,_ she would say. _I wish he had been a little more selfish. Ai.. No, that’s wrong. I’m sorry, Zero…_

These moments were not uncommon. But rarely would the burden of grief weigh so heavily on her that she would whisper her thoughts like shameful secrets. 

Kaname was a sad, lonely person. Kind. And not just the young Kuran heir, who should not be much older than Yuuki, but someone far, far older. Who, exactly, he didn’t know, and he didn’t feel disrespectful enough to go digging. 

Time had softened the impact of those last few days. Those last moments, with strong arms wrapped around them both, guiding them together. Offering them a measure of peace. It was a memory that Zero turned over in his mind more often lately. Could they have been friends? In some other life? In some universe where Zero’s past was not drenched in blood? In a world where they did not stand on opposite sides of destiny? 

He hears a sedate set of footsteps long before one of the large doors behind him creaks open. A moment later, the bench creaks under the added weight, and he doesn’t need to look to know that its Yuuki. After a moment, she leans against him, and he shifts to lean back just a little. _I’m here._

“I wonder what he would think,” she says after a minute, and when he glances down there’s a self-deprecating curve to her mouth, a distant, melancholy look in her eyes. It’s a look he’s seen often. Not as much as he used to, but he knows that thoughts of her beloved are never far behind. Sometimes he feels as if standing beside her, the shadow of that mans hangs over him. It’s a sensation he greets with familiarity. 

“I think he would be happy that you are happy,” He says softly, looking back up at the person in the ice coffin, who looks to be enjoying a restful sleep, instead of suspended in a moment between life and death. Yuuki rests her head on his shoulder, and Zero gently rests his head on hers. 

“Yeah,” she says softly. 

2.

A soft patter of feet make Zero look up just as the doors open, revealing a sleepy-looking Ai still in her pajamas. She ambles over to Zero with a yawn, rubbing at her eyes. 

“Ai,” he says, surprised, putting his book down. He waits while she stubbornly clambers into his lap with her blanket, pillowing her head on the arm of the armchair and curling up on his lap. It’s about ten in the morning; long after all the five year old little vampire girls should have been in bed. Considering how rumpled she looks, he can only assume that an attempt had been made. Though why she had sought him out, he’s not sure; maybe he’s just the first person she came across. 

“M’tired,” she mumbles, and he can hear the pout in her voice. Unaware of the helplessly fond smile that curves his mouth, he pats the bundle draped over his legs and picks up his book again. 

A few minutes of restless squirming reveal that whatever issue had driven the little girl downstairs has not been resolved. She whines and he sets the book down again, picking up the previous bundle and cradling it to his chest and standing up. “Did you have a bad dream?” He tries, leaving the sitting room and crossing into the foyer. Maybe a little walk would do the trick. He feels her shake her head against his chest, a fussy little grumble making its way to his ears, but no actual words. “Do you not feel well?” He asks instead.

“M’fine,” she says grouchily. She’s young enough that it’s still cute. It had been a little off putting, to say the least, to think such things when she looked so much like her father, but he'd gotten used to it.

“Hm,” he thinks about it, leisurely pacing down the dark hall towards the east wing. The kitchens are down this way. “Are you hungry?” He tries again.

Silence. He sighs with fond exasperation. Ai shifts a little in his arms, and he looks down to see eyes peering up at him from underneath the blanket. “Ai, did you not eat dinner?” 

“S’not my fault Tama-chan can’t cook. Oto-san and Okaa-san were both gone, I didn’t feel like eating.” She says it sullenly, and Zero falls quiet for a moment. Maybe he and Yuuki have been working a little too much lately. 

“I told you, Ai, I’m not your Oto-san,” he says softly, turning a corner towards the kitchens. 

“Zero Oto-san,” she says stubbornly, and he sighs again. 

“Ichijou-san can cook just fine, Ai, I’ve eaten some of his food myself.”

“S’not Zero Oto-san’s food, I don’t want it.”

He pauses in the hallway, looking down at the blanket covered head resting against his shoulder. Had she really felt his absence so strongly? 

He hugs her gently, tucking her head under his chin. He just stands there for a minute in the middle of the empty hall, cradling her against his chest. He’ll have to talk to Yuuki about this, somehow. She’d probably be devastated if she realized her little girl felt lonely. After a minute, Ai squirms, and little arms wrap around his neck, almost fever-warm from being wrapped in the blanket. 

With a deep breath, he starts down the hallway again.

“How do pancakes sound?” 


	2. Chapter 2

3.

With a heavy heart, Zero holstered his gun. He could hear his daughter's staggered breathing, her heart racing from across the room as the woman's body turned to ash. He took a shallow breath, fighting not to gag at the stench of death that permeated the area as he turned and walked away, towards the wall that Ren hid behind to shield her eyes from the tragedy. 

Had he had his way, Ren would never have had to experience such horrors, but training to be a hunter had been her choice to make. Such was the sacrifice of protecting the people you loved. Gently, he laid a hand on her shoulder and guided her away. 

As they sat around their little fire that night, he wondered if Kaname would have been a better father. If he would have never allowed his children to experience such atrocities. If he would have found a better way to prepare them for the atrocities of the world. If he would have protected them well enough that they would have never feared to begin with. 

He hugged his daughter close as she told him of the true depth of her feelings toward her sister. The need to protect. The thirst. A misunderstanding that had driven them apart. She had pushed Ai away out of fear of herself.

He wondered, some days later, if this explained the rift between Kaname and himself. A rift he created, because to the child he had been then, Kaname had been a vampire--not just anyone either, but the truest of vampires, a pureblood. It didn't matter that Kaname was a person with his own thoughts and feelings, desires, fears. To think that he had thought such things about someone so very like Ai, or Ren, nagged at him. 

How strange was it, now, that he found himself in love with a pureblood. Then again, considering that he was in love with Yuuki, maybe it wasn't so strange after all. 

Today he found himself in the place Aidou conducted his research, as he was wont to do every once in a while. Towers upon towers of papers and research that were varying degrees of old and new, he found the blond noble in the back at the desk as he always does. He stood back a bit, watching him scribble and mutter furiously. Apparently he had made some progress, it they had hit a snag somewhere in trying to decipher a specific page of some of the old research. "No, but that would be a dead end. Maybe if I…" And he left nonethewiser. 

The sun has risen by the time he gets home. He can hear two heartbeats, deep within the house when he walks through the door. Presumably, Ren is at school, so he takes it to mean Yuuki is home. Resting for once, by the sound of it. 

To his surprise, the sound of her heartbeat leads to the study, where light spills from the cracked door. Yuuki sits slumped over the desk, head pillowed on her arms. Maybe not resting then, he thinks with a sigh. Underneath her is a stack of papers with an unfinished letter to their spokesmen Isaya; something about the public election next month, which he learns from a brief glance. 

Gently, he scoops her out of the chair, and she hardly stirs as he carefully carries her out of the study and down the hall. Thankfully, the drapes in the bedroom were drawn, leaving the room in a velvety darkness as he crossed it to set Yuuki down on the bed. Still, her sleep remains undisturbed, and he wonders with a tinge of worry how exhausted she must be. 

Wrapping a hand around her ankle, he removes one shoe and then the other, peeling the sheets out from underneath her legs and laying them overtop. As he turns to leave fingers curl over his wrist, and he looks down in surprise to find sleepy brown eyes squinting up at him entirely. She doesn't seem entirely awake, be he gets the message clear enough. With a soft smile to reassure her, he shrugs out of his jack and hangs it on the vanity chair. When he sits down on the edge of the bed to remove his boots, slender arms wrap around his waist from behind, soft, sleep-warm lips trailing clumsily across his nape. Of course its only in these sleep-soft moments that she finds her confidence in being tactile, the rarity of such a display making him fumble as he struggles out of the combat boots.

By the time he gets them off she has fallen asleep again slumber against his back, and it's a challenge to lay her back down again without outright dropping her. Eventually he manages to settle down, Yuuki curled closely against his chest, head tucked under his chin. Zero takes in a deep breath and lets it out slowly, allowing her scent to soothe him and her heartbeat to lull him to sleep. 

  
  


4.

It’s a rare evening when all of them are home and not doing other things. Ai and Yuuki are still yawning at the table, leaning on each other, having woken up to the smell of food and dragged themselves out of bed. Ren, who’s on a day schedule because of school, just shakes her head at them with a fond smile. It’s rare, these days, to see that; she takes after him in this way. But he always sees her mother in her smile, soft and bright.

The two brunettes perk up when the plates hits the tabletop with a quiet  _ clink.  _ A small mountain of fluffy cinnamon pancakes fills one, which Ai quickly stabs with a fork and drags three to her plate. He finds it endearing that all her meticulously learned table etiquette goes right out the window whenever she eats his cooking--always a little reminder that she’s still his little girl, even though she’s as grown now as she’ll ever be. 

_ He should be here. _

Thinking about Kaname has become commonplace in his background thoughts; he’s accepted it at this point. This is his family, too, Zero thinks. A life he sacrificed for the chance to give them a better future. He imagines it for a moment, the five of them sitting around the table, enjoying a quiet breakfast. He’d probably let Yuuki doze on him while gently reprimanding Ai about table manners, and ask Ren about school. 

It’s a daydream that lasts only a few moments. Realistically, a future like that would be impossible; even if Kaname were to somehow wake up, he imagines the process of figuring out where they stand with each other would be a painful and complicated process. He doesn’t doubt that Yuuki loves him, but her heart has always belonged to him, even now. There’s no doubt what the outcome would be.

Ren catches his eye, a bland expression on her face, but he can see the question in her eyes. He answers it with a reassuring smile and digs in to his breakfast. 

**Author's Note:**

> I've realized that the scenes I've been writing are particularly short, so I'll be posting two per chapter. For the most part they will be out of chronological order.


End file.
